Saturday 4th August 2018

5729/18749

I sat at the kitchen table rolling Play Dough into tiny balls (Phoebe was quite strict about the size and then being spherical and would give them back if they did not fit industry standard) so that my daughter could take them and fill a gingerbread man cutter with them. I am unclear why she wanted to do this, but I laboured for an hour and very much enjoyed my work. I wondered if this would be a day I’d remember. Writing a blog about it is no guarantee.

To help me make an association in my brain, a cover of Reach for the Sky by S Club 7, apparently by Karen Carpenter came on the radio. Clearly a glitch in the matrix or an attempt by the teenager who is playing this video game that I am a character in to fuck with my brain. I know that Karen Carpenter died before S Club 7 were born and that S Club 7 were all born on the same day, from the same mother and are the most successful septuplets in the whole history of pop. But maybe Karen Carpenter travelled through time, heard the song and decided to take all the spark out of it.

Personally I am annoyed to see that death is not a reason to stop working. I was looking forward to being dead, but now worry I will have to keep churning out one man shows from beyond the grave.

But if I ever hear this version of the song again, I am sure to be taken back to this afternoon of Play Dough and gingerbread men moulds.

Once we’d filled the ginger bread man up, we had to move on to another cutter. It was only when I was halfway through that that I saw Phoebe had squashed all my Play Dough balls into a flat pancake. All that work for nothing.

Is there a better metaphor for being a dad? Right down to the crushed balls.

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